A worldwide mode of doing business in the garment industry has evolved in recent years due to economic factors. For example, garments may be very inexpensively manufactured in less developed countries such as Sri Lanka, the garment hanger factory may be located in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and the garments may be destined for sale in the U.S. Thus it is quite common today for garments to be made in one country, the hangers on which the garments are to be displayed made in another country, and the garment displayed for sale in yet a third country.
Inherent in the above mode of doing business is the shipment of garments on hangers from a final garment-to-hanger assembly location--almost invariably a garment manufacturing facility--to an ultimate destination, such as a retail store in the United States. If a garment is manufactured in Taiwan or Hong Kong for example and clipped to a hanger at that location, the hung garment is thereafter subjected, along with many other similar garments on hangers in a shipping container, to the shocks and bumps inherent in international transportation. Thus shipping containers may be assembled at a shipping dock at the garment manufacturing facility preparatory to loading onto a delivery truck for transport to a waterfront or an airport. In just this first step in the multi-step shipping process the garments will be subjected to shocks and bumps from human handling of the loaded containers in the factory and from rough handling as they are trundled to the shipping dock by fork lift truck. As the garments are bumped and jostled some or all of the garments will be struck by an adjacent garment, and if the adjacent garment hits the shock receiving garment in the clip area, one jaw of the clip which is gripping the shock receiving garment may be struck at a location on the clip which causes the clip to open and loosen its garment gripping force, with a consequent dropping of one side of the garment. If, later, the other active clip on the garment-hanger combination is also struck due to handling forces, said other clip may also open with the result that the garment then drops to the floor of the shipping container in a jumbled heap.
Similar opportunities for causing a clip to be jarred open occur many times during the long journey from Asia, for example, to the U.S. as the shipping container receives shocks and bumps every time a physical transfer of the shipping container from one mode of transportation occurs and, also, during a leg in the journey such as when a ship rolls at sea or an airplane is braked during taxi movement or as it reaches an unloading station.
When the garments in a shipping container finally reach a retail store in the U.S., a substantial percentage may be found either piled on the bottom of the shipping container or hanging from one clip on the garment hanger. In either condition, labor must be applied to re-connect each garment to its associated hanger and, on occasion, additional operation such as pressing and/or cleaning must take place before the garment is ready to be placed on sale.
At the retail sales level, there is an increasing trend to employ fewer and fewer selling personnel; indeed, the trend has almost reached a self-service mode of selling, though a few sales personnel will always be required for providing style information and fitting. The result however is that the ratio of number of garments to each sales person is increasing. While this ratio does not, in itself, present problems at the retail sale level (due to some extent at least, to lowered expectations of sales clerk assistance by retail customers), the greater number of garments in a retail store department presents logistics problems. For example, at the end of a selling day it is the duty of the sales personnel to straighten up the racks so that a neat and tidy appearance is presented to the eyes of the customers as they enter the department on the next selling day. The greater the number of garments on the racks per each sales person, the greater will be the time required by each sales person to straighten the racks, a fact which is not appreciated by sales personnel at the end of their shift. Part of the straightening process involves pulling a garment, say a size 36 men's slacks, which has been inadvertently placed in the size 38 section of the rack and inserting it into the size 36 section. At the present time this task can be very time consuming and frustrating, especially when the rack space is limited as it always is for a period of time after a new season's inventory has been received. Specifically, the pulling out and pushing in motions of extracting a garment from one location on a rack and inserting the garment into another location on the rack can result in a garment on either the moved hanger or a racked hanger dropping its garment, or at least one side of the garment. This usually occurs when the clip of one hanger engages the clip of another hanger in a direction and with a force to cause one jaw of one of the interfering clips to open slightly, thereby releasing the gripping pressure on the garment and letting it drop under the impetus of its own weight. When such an event occurs the time to straighten a rack is increased, much to the annoyance of the sales personnel.
The problem of contact between two hangers with resultant spillage also occurs in the absence of a need to change the physical location of a garment along the axis of a suspending rack Specifically, during the course of a selling day adjacent garments will be pulled off the racks, or tilted upwardly for viewing, by customers, following which little or no effort is made to make sure that the viewed garment is returned to a level position. Indeed, at the end of a selling day, some hangers will be level, some will be tipped upwardly at their outer end (i.e.: the end closest to the customer), and some will be tipped upwardly at their inner end. The result is a very untidy appearance. To return the garments to a neat, organized condition sales clerks prefer to either simply press downwardly on the upturned hangers or, at most, wiggle adjacent off-tilted hangers back and forth slightly so as to enable the garments to come back to a neutral position in which they hang straight down. Unfortunately these simple hand motions can also result in dropped garments due, to a considerable extent, to unlocking forces being exerted on one jaw of the two jaws which form the clamp at the end of each hanger. A basic cause of this problem is the fact that in most hangers in use today the upper portion of the clip which extends upwardly above the jaw is exposed in the sense that it projects into space outside the boundaries, and particularly the width dimensions, of the hanger.
In addition to the problems encountered by the persons in the chain of commerce, there is the matter of customer convenience. When a customer shops in a retail store he or she often pulls out one or more garments (in addition to the one purchased) for the purpose of getting a better view and assessing the suitability of the garment for purchase. The customer wants to pull a garment off the rack and return it to the rack without difficulty and in the shortest possible time. If the garment, during either the pulling out or putting back operations strikes a racked garment in the clip area, one clip on the racked garment may open up and drop one end of the suspended garment. Indeed, the manipulation of the garment to be inserted may be such that one clip on the garment may open up and partially drop the garment while the garment is held by the customer.
And finally, one problem common to all hanger systems today is the need, and consequent expense, to provide four (usually) different sizes of hangers to accommodate the different sizes of garments.